Thursday, February 4, 2010

# thoughts # Time for me Thursday

Taking care of me is like...

What I want to write about today isn't any sort of earth shattering, mind blowing concept but it certainly was a light bulb moment for me. The other morning, I was standing in the shower, grumbling to myself about shaving my legs. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the final product, it's just the process that I'm not so keen on.

I do a lot of thinking while in the shower. I think it's because it's quiet and peaceful and there aren't any interruptions so I can actually think something all the way through. I was thinking about my poor van. Now, if you haven't heard, we're about to have to dump maybe up to another $400 to get it running properly. The first $300 of that is for a tune up. Now, I'm not a car person but even I know that vehicles require maintenance and I'm lucky to not have had to do this before now. The van is 11 years old and this is the first tune up it's ever had. Realistically, it probably should have had one ages ago but not being a car person, I knew/know very little about what is routine maintenance with vehicles. Shame on me for always relying on a man to know these things. Seriously, it's my vehicle, why did I not find out? Sheesh.

Anyway, from there I went to thinking about house maintenance. You see, I love this house and I'm seriously hoping that everything works out so that we can make an arrangement to buy it from the owners when the lease is up in June. However, there are some issues with it and one of them is the dryer. It works fine, but it vents down and out through the basement and then back up and out one of the walls. I don't know if it's because it's never been cleaned or just because of the turns it must be taking, but lint has built up in it. Now, lint in a dryer vent is actually dangerous and can lead to fires, not to mention your clothes take forever to dry. When I was outside the other day, I finally figured out where it was venting from and the outside portion of the vent was clogged up with dryer lint! I cleaned it out from there and intend to get a dryer vent kit (Flylady has this wonderful one!) as soon as I can.

Now, what does all of this have to do with light bulb moments or even taking care of myself? Well, after thinking about how vehicles and houses need routine maintenance to function well, I realized that so do I. Just like my kitchen only requires routine maintenance after I do a deep clean in there, I realized that if I shaved my legs before they looked like gorilla legs, the process would be a lot faster and easier. The same goes with dry elbows and feet. If I routinely apply lotion and take care of them, I won't have to battle to get them back to smooth and lovely.

After making this "remarkable" discovery, I've decided that the Time For Me Thursdays are even more important than maybe I realized before. If we routinely take time to take care of ourselves, maybe we can ward off some of those expensive fixes down the road. It's much easier to take time to relax now then to need heart surgery later because the stress put stress on my heart.

So, I'm going to keep on posting those Thursday posts and hope that more people jump on my bandwagon. Taking time to help you take care of you is a good thing.

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4 comments:

Karen said...

Katie, you're so right about the maintenance. And I find I'm the last on the list, because I've let it become a habit. BTW, good luck with your van - mine is also 11 yrs old, but I like not having that car payment!

Angela @ Nine More Months said...

This is so true! I do need to start taking some time for me. Badly. After spending the day taking care of two kids, and then my husband when he gets home from work, there's not much energy or motivation left for myself.

Jim said...

Gorilla legs are the worst, from a man's point of view. but I can relate with the dry elbows thing, I could sand furniture with mine!

Petula said...

I definitely need to get on this bandwagon of taking care of myself on a regular basis. It can be so tough to get things done. I wanted to go to bed at 11 and it's almost midnight and I have one more correspondence that I have to do and two more paid assignments. SIGH... I should have stopped by here earlier in the day. Well, at least I got a little exercise in. Have a good weekend. :)

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